GROUP MEMBERS

•HIRA BASHIR
•MOHAMMAD ATEEQ SHAH
•SHOKAT ALI
 CHAPTER NO: 9

PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
• Actions by individual that help others?
• Why people help others often at considerable
cost to themselves ??
• What are the motives behind it ??
• When do people help or fail to help?
Prosocial behavior: Actions by individuals that help
others with no immediate benefit to the helper.
 Empathy-Altruism: It feels good to
help others.
Empathy - The capacity to be able to experience
others emotional states, feeling sympathetic toward
them, and taking their perspective.
• This perspective suggest that we help others
because if we experience empathy toward them,
we want their plight to end and also because “it
feels good to do good things.”
Altruism is a desire to help an other person even if it
involves a cost to the helper.
• This perspective suggest that we help others
because if we experience empathy toward
them,
• we want their plight to end and also because
“it feels good to do good things”
 Negative-state relief model:
Definition: we help others to reduce our own
negative (unpleasant) feelings.

• Empathy is not essential in negative-state

relief.
• Negative feelings may arise from emergency
or by any other event taking place.
Empathetic joy hypothesis:
Definition: a helper responds to the needs of
the victims because they want to accomplish
something, to be rewarded for it.

• To have positive impact on the lives of other

people.
• Empathy alone was not enough to produce a
prosocial response.
Competitive altruism approach:
Definition: we help others to boost our
own status and it brings large benefits, than
to engage in helping others.

• To be liked by others, to be the persons that

are desired by society.
• Greater the costs, greater the benefits.
 Kin selection theory
Definition: we help those who share our genes to
transfer our genes for the survival.
• We prefer younger than older people.

Reciprocal altruism theory:

We may be willing to help people who are unrelated to
us because helping is usually reciprocated.
 Responding in emergency:
• One: Notice the emergency
– Can be affected by personal life concerns and
proximity to the event

• Two: Interpret the need for help

– Pluralistic ignorance – if nobody else helps, we
might believe help is not needed
• Three: Feel a sense of responsibility
– The bystander effect – the more people present,
the more we experience a diffusion of
responsibility

• Four: Decide how to help

– Do we know what is needed and are we capable of
providing it?
– If we feel competent to help, we are more likely to
do so
• Five: Provide help
– It is best to do so in a way that does not
compromise your own safety (if possible)
 External and internal factors:

Situational factors:
Helping those whom we like i.e family, friends
etc than strangers
• If strangers are under consideration then similarity
matters.
• More attractive people tend to get more help.
Helping those who are not responsible for
their problems: Helping those who do not seem to
be responsible for their condition are more likely to
be helped
exposure to prosocial model increases
prosocial behavior:
Playing Prosocial Video Games
Prosocial video games increase subsequent
helping by priming prosocial thoughts,
building cognitive frameworks related to
helping, and related effects.
Gratitude: How It Increases Further Helping

• Gratitude increases prosocial behavior,

primarily by enhancing helpers’ feelings
of self-worth.
Emotional factors:

Positive emotions:
• Pleasant environmental conditions makes us help
others.
• Being in a good mood reduces the probability of
responding in a prosocial way.
Negative emotions:
• People in bad mood are most likely to help people
rather than in good mood, if negative feeling are not too
intense.
• To reduce negative feelings of their own.sss
 Factors That Reduce Helping
SOCIAL EXCLUSION:

Conditions in which individuals feel that they

have been excluded from some social grOUP.
 DARKNESS: Feeling of anonymity.

• If prosocial behavior sometimes occurs because it

can be seen and approved by others than darkness may
reduce it.

• When people are in large groups or crowd than they

obey social norms.

• Under cover of Darkness people often engage in

actions they would be reluctant to perform in broad
daylight.
 EFFECTS OF BEING HELPED:

• When perceived in a positive way than it will

create feeling of gratitude on the part of the
people who received help.

• When someone gives favor that you don’t need

than it can generate negative feelings.
• Members of low status group reacted negatively
when receiving help from high status group
because there self-esteem is harmed.